2. What’s Your Budget?

A good vendor should include these costs in their quote, but be sure to ask if any of these services are “add-ons.”

In addition to budgeting for the promo build, you’ll want to consider media spend, prize acquisition, and fulfillment. Some vendors will take care of prize acquisition & fulfillment, but there is typically an added cost depending on the number and size of prizes.

3. How Will You Drive Traffic?

Your game-based promotion is like a big event. It doesn’t matter how cool it is -- if you don’t tell anyone what’s happening, they’re not going to show up.

There are a number of different tactics you can use to promote your game-based marketing promo including:

You can also encourage participants to share your promotion with their friends and family. Just provide an incentive, like extra game-plays or chances to win. This helps spread word organically. This tactic isn’t a magic pill, but every click counts, right?

4. How Will You Measure Success?

It’s important to know how you’ll define success before you start, so you have a baseline to evaluate your promotion’s results.

Keep your KPIs aligned with your original goals. For example, if your goal was to drive loyalty acquisition, you should measure success based on the number of new loyalty members -- not the number of people who registered for the promotion.

5. What About Prizing?

Prizing is a critical part of your game-based promo planning.

It’s what gets consumers to register in the first place, and often what keeps them engaged -- so it has to be strategic.

There are three things to consider when thinking about prizing.

1. What will the structure be?

Your prize structure should be determined based on your objectives. For example if your goal is to generate repeat traffic, then you should consider a higher quantity of prizes which are awarded more frequently.

2. What will you offer?

Unless your target consumer is everyone, you need to think about what prizes will generate the most valuable leads for your business. Offering too general a prize can result in high registration rates, but ultimately leave you with a list of prize hunters -- not qualified leads.

3. Will you find a prize partner?

A prize partner can be a huge asset for your promotion -- from reducing costs associated with prizing to kicking in cash to feature their products. But to get them on board, you need to offer value in return.

Having a direct tie to sales not only helps drive a sales lift, it also makes it easier to measure your promo’s ROI.

8. What Will You Do With The Data You Collect?

Game-based marketing will yield a ton of data about your consumers. You can collect everything from basic demographic information to product and shopping preferences.

One of the best use cases for game-based marketing data is targeted ads based on product preferences. Promotions like build-your-own-grand-prize sweepstakes provide a ton of information about a customer’s shopping preferences -- information you can use to target them with personalized offers and ads after the promotion ends.

But to do this, you need to be setup to analyze that data and take action based on the insights. Before you start collecting consumer data, make sure you have a system in place to actually use it.

The Bottom Line

Game-based marketing can be hugely successful when done right.

But it’s also pretty easy to get wrong.

Take the time to plan out your strategy. Answer these 8 questions. And if you’re not building the promo in-house, be sure to find a reputable vendor with a background in game-based marketing.